Pines & Firs

Pines

Pines are conifers which are divided into two groups - soft or white pines, and hard or yellow pines.

Soft pines, like the Eastern White Pine have needles in bundles of five with one vein.

The twigs to which the needles are attached are smooth. The scaly cones hang downwards from the branches.

Hard pines, like the red pine, have two lengthwise veins and the needles are in bundles of two or three. This makes the red pine easy to distinguish from the white.

There is one native pine on The Jean Melrose Bevan Memorial Heritage Tree Walk - the Eastern White Pine, which is the provincial tree of Ontario. Many Canadians will be familiar with its windblown shape from the famous painting White Pine, by A. J. Casson, who was a member of the Group of Seven, Canadian painters. The original is part of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, where the Bevan family lived for many years.

http://www.mcmichael.com

Eastern White Pine
(Pinus strobus)

This tall conifer has long soft needles in bundles of five. Mature trees have straight single trunks, but the graceful long horizontal branches are often wind-formed into asymmetrical shapes and stand out distinctively against the horizon. In colonial times they were reserved for Royal Navy ship’s masts and are still the most valuable softwood lumber grown for forestry purposes in eastern Canada.

These trees can grow up to 30 m high, 100 cm in diameter and live for 200 years.

Eastern White Pine is the provincial tree of Ontario.

Austrian Pine

The Austrian Pine is a non-native pine that was originally planted for home landscaping and parks. It has a round, bushy form and, like the red pine, bunches of two needles. Its bark is flaky and gray in colour, unlike the reddish bark of the red pine.

These trees are found along the edge of the Walk and are not found on the map or labelled.

Firs

Firs are part of the Pine family and are found in cool climates around the northern hemisphere. Their needles are mostly soft, blunt-tipped and short, although the needles of the White Fir are longer than other firs. The tree’s shape is typically narrow with orderly branches, making them desirable for Christmas trees. The separate male and female cones grow at the top of the tree, and drop seed scales separately.

The bark is smooth and marked by soft blisters that contain a sticky substance known as resin. It was used to seal birch bark canoes and to mount samples on microscope slides, because it refracts light the same way glass does.

The Common Douglas-fir is not a fir, but a separate genus in the Pine family. It grows to significant heights and is used in construction. It is commonly found on the west coasts of North America. This large conifer is native in Canada to the coast of British Columbia and is a mainstay of the lumber industry, with uses from pulp for newspapers to shipbuilding structures. Old trees are resistant to fire damage. The Latin name means false fir, or false hemlock.

There is one true fir on The Jean Melrose Bevan Memorial Heritage Tree Walk is the White Fir. This is a native of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It has relatively long needles for a fir, and appears whitish-green because of the dense lines of white dots on both sides. White Fir, with its soft wood, has limited commercial use other than for Christmas trees.

There are two fir trees on The Jean Melrose Bevan Memorial Heritage Tree Walk. They include:

White Fir
(Abies concolor)

This is a native of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The needles spread horizontally in two distinct ranks on horizontal branches. When crushed they smell of oranges. Young trees are conical but mature trees have an irregular or flat-topped crown and drooping branches

Common Douglas-fir
(Pseudotsuga menziesii)

This large conifer is native in Canada to the coast of British Columbia and is a mainstay of the lumber industry, with uses from pulp for newspapers to shipbuilding structures. Flat flexible needles are about 1-inch long and are softer than spruce fir. The Latin name means false fir.

Artwork by Julian Mulock